Ground has finally broken for a police station in the South Bronx that will provide a new home for NYPD's 40th Precinct. Expected to open in 2021, the precinct will be leaving its current space, a three-story, 1920s Renaissance Revival building, for a shiny, 68-million-dollar new one, designed by none other than Bjarke Ingels.
“We were working in a century-old building that was designed for century-old policing methods. Now we’re changing that with a modern facility made for modern, neighborhood policing" said NYPD Commissioner James O'Neil.
Bronx is one of the city's poorest districts, as well as its most crime-ridden. And newly released data shows it to be increasing; the murder rate nearly doubled in the first half of 2018. Officials hope the new facility could help change that, with a community oriented design believed to foster transparency and communication between the police and local residents.
From the outside, the building is shaped like a stack of bricks. Meant to reference the rusticated bases of early NYC Police Stations, it is instead, quite similar in form to BIG's LEGO house, appearing as its authoritarian big brother.
That said, it boasts a number of unique features. At 43,500 square feet, the station will feature a maintenance shop, changing rooms, storage, and spaces for officers to reduce stress and promote physical activity, including an exercise courtyard and climbing wall. There will be an atrium. And information kiosks. It will be the first precinct to have a green roof and a community meeting room.
All of this is meant to create a "new kind of police station," according to BIG and echoed by NYPD Commissioner James O'Neill, who proudly stated at the press conference that "our message to New York going forward is that this is your station house." While ambitiously designed to strengthen the bond between residents and police, building trust with a community laden with very real concerns about their treatment at the hands of New York's police will take a lot more than calling in a Starchitect.
14 Comments
Bjarke is the Elon Musk of architecture. Eco-friendly rhetoric masking a hardcore conservative movement — clients include: Fox News, Washington R******s, NYPD.
This is a tank, a machine to clear out the minorities for gentrification and enevitable rezoning.
Also, the colorful diagrams are so misleading--so much more lively than the real design. Manipulative
A rotating swastika.. I am laughing my ass off!
I think the stacked box thingy has been overdone already.
Anyway, here is the existing building:
This is NOT the existing building. The building in your photo is actually in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
Volunteer, Here is the current 40th precinct building. You can see how the Neoclassical police house "thingy" was repeated over and over again at that time.
Ha ha copy paste "architecture" now these are literally overdone, so much so that you don't even know which one it is, fuck context!
When the revolution comes they will wish they had the old masonry building.
David, You are correct, my error. Either similar1920s building has more context and each is grounded in the history and fabric of New York City. Each building could be repurposed to hundreds of civic uses or thousands of commercial or residential uses. Perhaps the Planning Commission needs a new digs?
The article doesn't touch on the plans for the old building. The new building is to be built at the corner of St. Ann's Avenue and East 149th Street (now a open lot next to St. Mary's Park). The existing station is about a mile away at 257 Alexander Avenue.
The new structure is totally alien to the community and the prose used to describe it as fostering "transparency and communication" between the police and residents is Orwellian. It's atrocious.
I smell someone using federal funds (mostly) for a new building and making a killing off the existing building by selling it to a developer for practically nothing and getting a fat kickback.
As an architect who loathes austerity politics and the current dependency of Architecture culture on private capital, I support the effort to hire excellent design-oriented architecture firms to design public buildings.
However, I also agree that the rhetoric around the building's concept is extremely naive and propagandistic. We need to replace the police with a different type of service altogether. A nicer station building is lipstick on a pig.
I don't think that the building is alien looking at all. BIG could/should have pushed the form to actually create something more radical.
If you look at the neighborhood there are about 15 or so hideous 20- story brick high-rises straight out of the Pruitt-Igoe era. A start on reducing crime might be to dynamite them and build some humane housing?
You're suggesting to eliminate public housing because you don't like the architectural style. There is nothing humane about that.
This is a guard tower at a nuclear defense plant near my childhood home in Tennessee that dates back to the late 50s. Actually a little cleaner design than BIG's. Don't think it has Astroturf on the roof though.
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